Parataxis: Morphological Similarity in Traditional Music

In this paper an automatic system for the detection of similar phrases in music of the Eastern Mediterranean is proposed. This music follows a specific structure, which is referred to as parataxis. The proposed system can be applied to audio signals of complex mixtures that contain the lead melody together with instrumental accompaniment. It is shown that including a lead melody estimation into a stateof-the-art system for cover song detection leads to promising results on a dataset of transcribed traditional dances from the island of Crete in Greece. Furthermore, a general framework that includes also rhythmic aspects is proposed. The proposed method represents a simple framework for the support of ethnomusicological studies on related forms of traditional music.